Bitter Faded Memories
by arrah
Summary: Thinking back on the things he left behind. Kilik-Sora/Rika. One-shot.


**note:** This was originally posted on DreamWidth on the journal "kimmiserate", this is a cross-post. I have taken no part in the creation or publishing of Air Gear nor do I make any claims to have done so. It's also worth noting that this is filled with questionable characterisation and grammar. Apologies.

* * *

Somewhere in the mix of violent, vicious hatred, and violate anger, there were lingering feelings of regret. Little things that nagged at Sora, lashed at his insides, like flicking flames striking against the inside of the fireplace. He still remembers a different time, a time when he had felt a little different—_barely_, but enough to make an impact. After all, it was back then when he had truly learned that there were three concepts in his life that simply did not exist in his world, deemed useless and completely _boring_.

The realisation of these things helped shape him into the man he was today.

.x.

i. _Accepting Defeat._

"Get up," he hears Kilik command from across the room, his voice sounding distant and blurred. There's something watery about his hearing, but maybe it's just the sound of his blood pumping and his heart pounding echoing through his ears. The rhythm is erratic, and he gets it in his head that Kilik's heart must be nothing like that at all. It couldn't be, he's nearly a robot. He has to be all steady beats, an almost monotonous rhythm that never slows or rises and he laughs at the idea. It comes out a little bitter, followed by a chunk of blood and a smidgen of tissue from where he bit the inside of his cheek from that last trick of Kilik's.

It had hit him like a train, ground splintering and flinging him back across the room. He skidded across the floor on his stomach as he spat and swore Kilik's name, spine twisting at an awkward and painful angle when he finally came to a stop. His entire body aches, blood seeping through his clothing in small quantities from the deep gashes across his chest and some other less important places—but he feels _alive_. There is nothing else like this, nothing else like facing off against Kilik one-on-one in these stupid little rooms they use for this very purpose. They feel like little black holes of gray space and they're eternally suffocating, almost painful to stay in for too long. He feels that he'd rather fight outside, in the sky, but this is where Kilik keeps insisting that they remain. It's always something about eliminating weaknesses, and playing them towards your strengths, but the rest of Kilik's words fade off into a steady static buzz. He's all strategy, and cold calculations. There's no heart in it, and Sora finds something annoying about that. Nonetheless, he relents and comes back here to face off with him time and time again. For now, he's still bothering to keep his bonds with this idiot strong.

He knows he must eventually let this go, eventually must cut these ties and smash the bonds between them into dust, but for now. . . He doesn't want to lose his hold on him. There's something all too satisfying about being the only person Kilik challenges to a fight, the only person who gets dragged into these rooms that separate themselves from the rest of the world. It makes him feel powerful, strong, and yet in the same breath _pathetically weak._

"What? Are you getting old over there?" he asks as he pulls himself up to his feet, A-T wheels smacking against the ground with a resounding noise. He's not too injured to keep fighting, he's not too hurt to let that hinder him from winning. Kilik may be the perfect experiment, the perfect specimen, but _who the fuck_gave a damn about that? That all means nothing outside of that lab, outside of those tests and those scientists. They didn't account for everything, or maybe anything at all. They had underestimated him, all of the others, and thought to simply throw them away.

He'd never let it happen. He'll show them, and best of all: he'll show _Kilik._

The floor trembles underneath his feet, tearing apart from the force of his wind as he propels himself back towards Kilik to finally end this round.

.x.

ii. _Showing Weakness._

Love or _something_ courses through his veins, colouring his cheeks and making his fingers tremble minutely. It's so stupid and he thinks that he may even hate it a little bit, but Rika's fingers are laced with him, warm and her grip tight. Her own feelings of love all but bleed out of her, radiating from her skin and into the air where they infect him with what could only be described as . . . _No._ That's not right. It couldn't really be described or maybe he's just lost in a sea of unfamiliar emotions and he can't decide what it is that he feels. It's difficult to narrow it down. Part of him wants to break her, wants to tear her apart and leave her battered and broken for the whole world to find, but the rest of him likes her just where she was: _by his side_. She is both gentle and rough, kind and cruel, but she's always right there by his side. She is an outsider, a completely normal human, but fights harder for his sake than any other living being ever has. There's nothing for her to gain here, nothing for her to win, but she's always the first one to throw herself into the line of fire, teeth gritted and fists clenched.

There's something about that. . . Something about that hits him like a strike to the heart, he can't let her go and that's fine, right? That is where she should be. Every great man needed an equally great woman to compliment him, to push him a bit harder, to comfort him in his times of need and Rika was all of that and more. There was no other woman he'd rather have and he knows, when he thinks about it, that he could take any woman he wanted. Women who would ultimately reject him were far and few in between, drowned out by the exciting tittering of those who worshipped the very ground the Wind King walked on. He's made the attempt once or twice, reaching out to pluck the fruit of a young girl too naive to recognise the wolf in front of her, but every time something stops him.

Maybe it's just the furious glint of Kilik's eyes from the distance, watching and waiting for him to make a big enough mistake so he could make his move. There's that about this too, having something that Kilik desperately wants but cannot have. There is nothing in this world that Kilik has been denied of but this and this one thing—this one person—belongs wholeheartedly to him. No matter what he did, he couldn't take her. There was no amount of coercion that could make Rika falter and pride swells in his chest at the idea, at being able to lord this so effortlessly over Kilik.

If he cannot have what he wants then neither should Kilik.

Yet, something tells him that he cannot actually have this, cannot hold onto this fiery and reckless girl. Every part of him urges him remember that he must destroy it before it will destroy him. Relying on another will only ultimately be his downfall.

No one ever made it to the top without stepping on a couple corpses.

.x.

iii. _Personal Space._

Like names, none of them had ever been granted the knowledge of what their individual birthdays were. The only things they had ever known about themselves were what experiment number they were. Anything else was insignificant for the scientists to bear a second thought about. They weren't humans, close but not quite, so they didn't deserve the same respect. All they ever needed to do was _ride_and up until they escaped, it was all they ever needed.

It was only when they were standing underneath the bright blue sky that felt they needed more. They needed to live outside the tower, outside their cages, and underneath the bright light of infinite possibilities. Their names had been decided then, sparked into life as they cast away the chains of numbers and black bodysuits. Birthdays had come soon after, along with the remembrance of the day they all escaped. Things they had always been told were meaningless became important in one fell swoop. For children who once had nothing but each other, they gave each other the little things first.

The big things came later—big things such as _a purpose_and Sora was the one to give it to them.

Every birthday since then was treated as a grand event, and Sora's was no exception. On his last birthday, it was Spitfire who had given him the single most satisfying object possible: a camera. Mankind was known for several hilarious series of fuck-ups, but the camera was probably one of the greatest inventions ever created. He hadn't been shy in the slightest about showing his appreciation to Spitfire, partially wallowing all over him until he get bored with his quiet discomfort. He had taken it to a different level, shouting on Spitfire's praising and proclaiming his superiority over the rest of the team or least until Kilik slammed a book against the side of his skull.

The first days after were mostly uneventful with Sora snapping pictures of just random instances, strange things he saw on the street and a couple of the training sessions between team-mates. He kept it tame, laid low, up until everyone had dropped their guard and gotten used to having their picture taken by him. It was all innocent! Completely innocent and he was even making a little photo album for them. Well, it was innocent up until it got boring and everyone had gotten way too comfortable around him. That's when he had got amp it up and start taking a more interesting kind of photograph!

It took him only a day to simultaneously bring woe to the entire team, obsessively snapping photos of everyone at their absolute worst. Who the hell needed a bunch of boring old photos anyway? These things were the shit that people needed to remember!

Ine came close to destroying it after the second day of this, furiously trying to punch through the lens after he photographed her in the middle of changing (more to fuck with Spitfire than any real interest in her body, but if you've seen one pair of boobs then you've got to see them all—_no exceptions_). He had slid backwards on his trecks through the hall as she chased him down, kicking up sparks as his laughter echoed off the walls where as she had degraded down to nothing but furious limbs and hysterical screaming. Who'd have thought she'd be so touchy about her body?

The third day had been equally perilous and he had almost lost the camera entirely as he quietly pulled open the doors of the shower room. There was too much steam, making his hands sweaty and the lens foggy. Maybe this wasn't as good of an idea as he originally thought, but he was completely positive that this was Rika's allotted (Kilik had a schedule for everything, that fucking freak) shower time and he was more than determined to snap a hot photo of her to hold onto. You know, for those lonely nights when she was too busy attending to her family matters to come spend time with him.

What he found instead was arguably much more entertaining. It could go either way, it just depended on how he chose to look at it. Rather than Rika, he came across Kilik in the middle of shampooing his hair with that _stupid pink hat_. He cringed at the sight of it, biting back a laugh as he furiously wiped the lens of the camera off before snapping a photo of the whole hilarious scene. More than anything, it was worth it for Kilik's reaction. Surprise got him first, leaving him sputtering and wide-eyed as he scrambled to cover himself up like some bashful teenage girl.

There was just a moment of brief silence between them with Sora grinning and Kilik's body rapidly turning red from embarrassment.

_"TAKEUCHI SORA!" _he had cried out as soon as he found his voice, protectively holding the towel over his chest. He was on his feet in an instance, carelessly knocking over the stool he had been sitting on, before furiously closing the distance between the two of them. Every step echoed throughout the bath room, wet feet on tile and Sora considers running for about half a second.

"_Oooh!_ A killer aura! _Scary, scary! _Sorry, but everyone's fair game, don't 'cha know!" he coos out at him instead, arms lifting up to fold behind his head. He's not even remotely afraid of Kilik, especially not while still naked and wearing that horrible contraption on his head.

The ensuing punch to the face sends him flying.

The morning after, Sora finds the broken pieces of his camera on his bed.


End file.
